


Kingdom of Light

by sarensen



Series: To the cold and the nebulous [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Violent Sex, consensual one-sided sex, extreme masochism, hotmess hux, hux is a disaster, kylo loves him so so much, overuse of metaphorical devices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 09:32:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7635151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarensen/pseuds/sarensen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's quiet long enough for the skin to erode off Kylo’s bones entirely, leaving him stripped bare in the devastation of loving Hux.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kingdom of Light

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place right after Hux salvages what's left of Kylo Ren from the ruins of Starkiller Base.

Snow still clings to his hair, melting between his eyelashes and stinging along the burn splitting his cheek. The clinical overhead lights of the Finalizer slide rhythmically past his field of vision, streaking blue-white behind his eyes. 

Hands like ice crawl over his face and down his side, raking through his hair. Hux. Hux came for him on the planet, speared straight through the fire and the ash and bore down on him with singular purpose, undaunted and composed. 

Kylo isn’t quite sure how they got here, exactly, hurts too much to think about it, but Hux came for him, and he’s alive, though he really shouldn’t be.

Hux’s cool, clipped voice trickles over him like water, talking to someone Kylo can’t see.

And then Hux is gone, and Kylo feels like he is drowning.

 

\---

 

He surfaces, later, to the quiet thrum of a hyperdrive and the steady pulsing tone of a heart monitor, the world streaking watercolor blues and oranges as he tries to focus. Parts of his body flare to life from the haze of a numbing analgesic cloud, then drip back into the sheets and into nothingness. 

Somewhere, someone is screaming.

The progression of time is a hazy thing, unsure. He thinks he remembers being in pain (an abstract concept, dulled now by anesthesia).

He remembers snow. He remembers failure.

Someone lifts his head, winding long swathes of white around his cheek, over his eye.

The sound of screaming is closer now, and as the world (medical officers in First Order uniforms the sharp disorientating flowery smell of bacta a long trailing line of silver connected to his wrist three droids baring down on his legs and waist and arms to keep him immobile) bleeds into focus, it occurs to Kylo that the one screaming might be him.

 

\---

 

He flinches into consciousness again from a dream in which Han Solo kills him instead, and the sound of screaming still echoes through the Force, and that isn’t right, it’s coming from the wrong place, and realization like cold water douses over Kylo as he recognizes the source: The one who’s been screaming isn't him.

It's Hux.

Medical droids, still in the process of binding the wound on his thigh, beep frantically in his wake as Kylo tears the drip from his hand, crashing from the narrow surgical berth to the floor. His legs don’t quite work the way he wants them to and the world is strangely flat from his one-eyed perspective, but he fights against the canting horizon and flounders to his feet.

Hux kept it together long enough to get Kylo back to the Finalizer. And then he fell apart.

Kylo runs, as best he can. Urgency bites at his back, picks him up when he lurches into a Stormtrooper and throws him around the last corner into familiar and comforting territory.

He stumbles, again, and finally sinks to the floor against Hux’s door, becomes a scar in the smooth monochrome corridor of the Finalizer. Letting his head rest back against the cold durasteel, he dissolves for a moment into the low thrum of the ion engines.

On the other side of the door is an apocalypse. Starkiller Base is dead, and something important inside of Hux has broken, and he rails against the unjustness of it, against his own defeat, pride razed to the ground. The thermonuclear violence of his rage leaves him exposed, a raw and desperate wound in the wake of its immensity.

Kylo aches. He aches, and waits until the destruction on the other side of the door dwindles into silence, until the sound of furniture breaking becomes quiet and Hux is no longer screaming like he's being ripped apart. Then he assembles himself enough to get up off the floor and goes inside.

It’s a battlefield, almost eerie for the sudden peace in the wake of its destruction. And in the center of it all, Hux is bent and heaving ragged breaths, hair disheveled, collar peeling over his clavicle.

In his mind Kylo replays Hux’s speech before firing the weapon, sees the magnitude of his triumph reflected in eyes the color of ice. That Hux was faultless, the ultimate embodiment of the Order: neat, slicked-back hair under the General’s hat, black uniform fitted to every fluid curve, all perfect angles and ambition.

The weight of his conviction was his crown and the strength of his faith in the Order was his scepter, and he was a cold and beautiful symbol of fear, the galaxy trembling at his feet. Unconquerable, unbreakable. 

Everything the Hux standing in front of him now is not.

The General regards Kylo Ren in his ridiculous hospital robe and Kylo has no idea what he’s thinking, but when he snarls, “What do you want, Ren?”, his animosity billows over Kylo, scorching into his defenses.

Hux’s hat lies discarded on the floor, and Kylo bends with some effort to pick it up before slowly, carefully, pushing it down over hair like fire. The Force slips in and out of his grasp, but he doesn’t need it, not here, not with Hux. This is the only place in the galaxy he feels safe without it, here with his ruined General in pieces before him.

And Hux finally understands why Kylo has come, driven by Hux’s merciless gravity straight into his arms, the inevitable conclusion of Kylo’s orbit.

He lets Hux fuck him, because it’s what Hux needs. Kylo is too drugged up to get it up, in too much pain, so he focuses on the details of Hux, the well-worn comfort of him; presses his face into his hair to inhale the clean, crisp smell of him and runs his fingers over each of his ribs, dipping into every ridge and cresting over the delicate valleys of his hips. He fits his mouth over the freckles on his shoulder and lets their warmth seep into his lips, the fine golden hair on his arms tickling Kylo’s palms. The world drips into the corner of his eye, dark copper and shades of grey.

It turns violent, like it inevitably always does: Hux is a man who has succeeded in crushing every last gentle thing inside himself. With him, everything is a war; all of his dark and profane things reserved just for Kylo, for the quiet and secret nights when not even the twilight glow of the galaxy can reach the darkness in their quarters. Hux pours into Kylo’s every tear and crack like molten gold; a kingdom of light between them.

He fucks Kylo’s face like he means to split it in half and finish what the scavenger girl started. His palm splays wide over the bandages hiding Kylo’s ruined cheek, the pads of his fingers resting on his eyebrow. He pulls out, comes all over Kylo’s face, and it seeps into the evidence of Kylo’s failure, stinging. 

Time blurs with the consistency of tar and he clings to Hux, tight enough to feel the fine bones shifting in his wrists, hear the slightest scrape of teeth as Hux drags his mouth over his neck.

And when Hux is ready again his cruel fingers dig deep purple blossoms into Kylo’s hips and Kylo can’t protect himself, doesn’t think he even wants to, so he dregs what little of the Force he can from the bottom of his reserves and crawls into a little space in the back of Hux's mind, erasing himself for a while. 

Tomorrow, they will stand before Supreme Leader, stand in the face of their shared failure and Hux will once again be the perfect General, all his shards drawn about him in a tight and impenetrable shield.

Tonight, Hux gives his rage to Kylo to add to the well of his own, and Kylo accepts it because this destruction, this unraveling and this desperate need for closeness - this too belongs only to Kylo.

And when it’s over and a hundred new bruises have flowered on Kylo’s ribs, on his face and around his neck, and Hux is trembling with spent energy, then Kylo crushes him to his chest. Hux's fingernails dig into his shoulders. The weight of his trust seeps into Kylo's bruises like oil, stealing the breath from his lungs.

They are suddenly nothing more than a wreckage of snow and cold and ash and the dying echoes of what could have been.

Eventually, Hux grows still and heavy in Kylo’s arms. He says, softly, “Thank you.”

And Kylo shuts his eyes against the triviality of what they have become, and when he wakes up again the weight of Hux has disappeared, and every single part of Kylo aches. He turns his head to find Hux on his back on the other side of the narrow berth, staring at the ceiling. Smoke streams from his lips in a soft sigh, his hand shaking only slightly as he reaches down to stub out his cigarette.

In the silence that follows Kylo rolls onto his side to face him, sheets still wet with his own blood clinging to his hips. He reaches up to rest the tips of his fingers on Hux's lips.

“She blinded me,” he says, and doesn’t know exactly when he realized it. Hux turns to look at him, his gaze a slice of dull grey-green in the dim light. Kylo’s fingers slip off his mouth.

Hux doesn't immediately answer, so Kylo reaches up to touch the swathe of white covering his face, where his right eye used to be.

On the surface, Hux’s face does not change, but his expression is suddenly intense. They are very close, and Kylo knows him intimately, knows the small muscle twitching in the corner of his jaw, the flicker of his eyebrows drawing together, and the way the very corners of his mouth flatten out. His face is a minefield of microaggressions and the Force doesn't rise to Kylo's summons, but he can imagine what Hux is thinking, picture the word rising from the depths of his mind like a brand: Failure.

Hux says: “You still have one eye left.”

He does not say: Some of us lost  _ everything _ .

Kylo cannot stop the soft exhale through his mouth; the words eat into his skin like poison. He rolls onto his side, away from Hux, and stares at the wall.

He does not say: Not everything.

It's quiet long enough for the skin to erode off Kylo’s bones entirely, leaving him stripped bare in the devastation of loving Hux. Then Hux turns onto his side and fits himself to Kylo's back, pressing his face into his hair. He reaches awkwardly over his side to find his hand.  
  
Kylo aches, and tries to sleep.


End file.
